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How Libraries will Save the World + Your Business

What can libraries add to your business—and your bottom line? Plenty. Hear how 3 diverse companies—a tech giant, an online start-up and the web’s largest social reading site—all found new value by adding libraries to their apps. Learn how your site or mobile app can benefit from the social good of supporting these vital but under-resourced institutions that have defined American cultural life for more than 200 years. Ben Franklin started the first public library, but will Google and Wikipedia close them down? Join Microsoft, EasyBib and GoodReads—along with OCLC, the world’s largest library cooperative—to hear how they are re-imaging libraries (and access to online library content) through syndication and new platforms. They’re gaining dedicated users, and helping libraries become very social in the process.

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Questions

How are libraries being represented collectively—in the U.S. and worldwide?

What did these businesses--start-ups and established—gain by partnering with a library collective? What do libraries offer that can help a businesses grow, while earning “local, social good” karma points in the process?

Do we need libraries, when so much content is now available online through GoogeBooks, GoogleScholar, Wikipedia and Answers.com? What is the value of libraries today, and what do they gain by partnering with social web sites?

How do libraries today help connect people to online content not available through a Google search? What might the future look like?

What other organizations and types of partnerships might be a good fit for libraries, through the model of syndication as shown by the three examples of Microsoft, EasyBib and GoodReads?